


you are my destiny

by kinases



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-09-13 15:55:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9131329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinases/pseuds/kinases
Summary: yeah, woohyun's lonely—he'll admit that, at least. maybe he just needs a roommate or a pet, something to take his mind off of things. he's just not quite prepared for the newest addition to his life to be a gumiho.





	1. you are my destiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> honestly, woohyun's life sucks. and then he realizes it doesn't suck _that much_.

Woohyun has always loved the outdoors. There’s something special about the silence of the air around him when he’s in the woods by himself, surrounded by the brush of the wind against his face. There aren’t many places he can go to just to be alone in Seoul, so he takes a train about an hour out of the city and follows where it takes him.

He gets off at a station near Yongjusa after the conductor tells him that this is the last stop, and he spends the trek up to the temple snapping photos of the scenery around him. It’s beautiful, the greens of the leaves starting to turn vivid reds and oranges with the changing of the season. Birdsong fills the air, and Woohyun starts singing along, trying to harmonize along to the chirping melodies.

A fox darts across his path, and he manages to get a quick shot of it before it’s gone. He’s always loved animals, and he wonders, idly, if he’d be allowed to keep a fox as a pet.

There are too many stairs up to the temple than Woohyun’s particularly comfortable with. By the time he gets to the top, he’s panting, short of breath, and he sits down on a bench near the stairs to catch his breath. He’s idly tapping at his phone when he notices movement out of the corner of his eye. It’s the fox again, and this time it treads closer to him, its paws barely leaving the ground. Woohyun freezes, unsure of whether he should try to get more shots or if it’ll run away if he tries. Instead of darting away again, though, it cocks its head at him, before it turns tail and disappears into the brush.

Woohyun doesn’t know why, but he follows.

He pushes through branches and underbrush, raising an arm to his face so he doesn’t have to squint in the sunlight, strangely strong on what’s supposed to be an overcast day, and suddenly, the trees open up to reveal a shrine. Almost as if it’s been waiting for him, the fox is poised at the top of the steps, and when Woohyun takes another step closer, it runs into the shrine.

It’s dark inside, and the only light seeping into the shrine comes from the door. Woohyun cranes his head so he can see all of the tapestries and scrolls decorating the walls of the shrine, too many to count. The fox is nowhere to be found. Woohyun looks around, craning his head this way and that, but he gives up the search, instead taking out his phone again so he can get some shots in.

Before he can, though, he slips on a knot in the wood, and his first instinct is to protect his phone, one arm in front of him to break the fall. He catches himself on the ground, his head knocking into the wood, and he breathes a sigh of relief when he looks down and his phone is safe. He looks up, though, and it’s all he can do not to scream.

There’s a smear of red across the previously pristine scroll in front of him—what Woohyun knows is his blood from when he’d scraped it across the rough wall. He looks around frantically for anything to wipe the blood off with, and he’s about to rip off a sliver of fabric from his sweater to try to get it off when he hears something behind him.

“You do not have to do that.”

Woohyun turns around slowly, almost as if he’s been frozen. There’s a man in what looks like a monk’s clothes on the other side of the shrine, and Woohyun drops to his knees, pressing his forehead to the ground. It’s not enough that there’s permanent evidence of what he’d done, but now there’s a witness to his crime.

“I’m sorry,” he says into the ground, barely any louder than a whisper. “I’ll—I’ll pay for the repairs, I’m so sorry—”

Woohyun feels the press of a hand against his head, and he looks up. He can just barely make out the slight outline of tails, too many, far more than he can count, floating in the air around the man, and he wonders if he’s dreaming when he sees the ghostly outline of two pointed ears perched atop the man’s head as well.

“You have saved me,” the man says, and there’s something unsettlingly canine about the way he smiles, about how his teeth took too sharp and too pointed to be human. His eyes crinkle into half moons and the ears and the tail blink in and out into existence around him, and Woohyun’s sure he’s hit his head on something and now he’s having some kind of out of body experience. “There is no need for apologies.”

Then Woohyun finds himself at the base of the mountain again, and he stumbles on his feet. He whirls around for a moment, trying to catch his bearings, and he thinks that there’s no logical reason for the way he’d just gotten down the entire mountain from the shrine in the blink of an eye. He shrugs it off, though. He must’ve just dreamt up the entire experience.

Or at least, that’s what he tells himself the entire train ride home until he opens the door of his apartment, and the man from the shrine is sitting on his couch, his hands folded in his lap and looking as out of place as anything could be. Woohyun’s first instinct is to run, to call the cops, but for some reason he’s rooted in place.

“Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? Wait, how did you get in?” Woohyun asks instead, the words coming out of him in a rush. The man smiles placidly, and Woohyun takes one, two steps forward until he’s standing right in front of him. In this light, the man’s hair shines gold and bronze and silver, and Woohyun’s sure of it now. There is a second pair of ears on top of his head, and Woohyun swears he can see one twitch.

He reaches out without really meaning to, and he’s met with softness, the outlines of the ears seeming to solidify underneath his hands. He blinks, and the man laughs, a clear, tinkling sound that reminds Woohyun, strangely enough, of the bells in the shrine.

“I am here because I chose you. My name is Sunggyu. I am not human.” The grin on the man’s face stretches wider, his cheeks creasing, and Woohyun feels like he’s being left out of a joke. “I am a gumiho.”

Woohyun stares at the ears beneath his palm and the tails waving lazily behind the man, and he thinks to himself that he should’ve known as soon as he’d fallen in the shrine. He staggers backward, because this contradicts everything he’s known and everything he’s ever believed in, but the proof is right here in front of him.

“I also would like to make my residence inside that room,” Sunggyu says, and he points in the direction of Woohyun’s own bedroom, his tails flicking around him. He folds his arms into his robes and smiles genially at Woohyun. “I have decided that it is a suitable place for me to rest whenever I wish."

Woohyun feels like he really should say something, that he should tell this man to get out of his life and never speak to him again, that he’s going to call the police on him and have him escorted out of his room, that he’s going to wake up the next morning and realize that it was all just a dream. But it’s not all just a dream, and he stands there, frozen in place even though he knows his arms and legs still move.

He watches as Sunggyu stands up to make his way towards Woohyun’s room, his tails swishing around him, as Sunggyu takes all of Woohyun’s pillows and blankets and grins at him from the center of the bed, as the afternoon sun glints off of Sunggyu’s hair and ears and tails and makes the entire room shine with an ethereal light, and Woohyun wonders just what he’s gotten himself into.

 

Sunggyu makes himself at home in Woohyun’s bed. The man, the _gumiho_ , looks up when Woohyun steps into the room the next day and sits down at the edge of his bed. Sunggyu is sprawled out over the covers, hugging the pillows to him with his leg thrown over one of them. The fabric of his robes rides up his thighs, exposing more skin than Woohyun thinks is really necessary, and Woohyun clears his throat.

“How long are you going to stay here?”

Sunggyu stares up at him before he curls even more into the pillows. “As long as I wish to. Your bed is rather comfortable. I enjoy being in it.”

Woohyun’s expected as much. He sighs and turns to the closet next to the bed, pulling out one of the ironed suits he’d hung up the last time he’d done his laundry. He reaches for the ties he’s stashed in the lower drawer as well, his hand hovering over several different colors before he chooses the striped navy blue one. He’s acutely aware that Sunggyu’s watching him get ready for the day, and although he knows he should really call the cops or get rid of him, Sunggyu’s not doing him any harm.

“What are you doing?” Sunggyu asks finally. When Woohyun looks over, he’s sitting up on the bed, watching Woohyun select his clothes for the day with an almost unnatural fascination.

“I’m getting my clothes.” Socks, now. Striped or plain? He’ll go with striped today, since it matches his tie.

“But you are already wearing clothes, are you not?” Sunggyu’s ears, the fox ones, not the ones on the side of his head, are cocked forward now, and Woohyun wonders if that means he’s interested.

“These are my sleep clothes.” Woohyun gestures to the t-shirt and the boxers he’d changed into last night before he went to sleep in the guest room. He couldn’t just kick Sunggyu out of his own room, and besides, Woohyun doesn’t think he’ll be able to kick Sunggyu out even if he wants to. “These are my work clothes.”

“Oh, work.” Sunggyu’s eyebrows furrow. “You do not look like a rice farmer.”

“I’m not a rice farmer,” Woohyun says, incredulous. He stares at the suit and the tie in his arms and wonders just what part of this ensemble screams _rice farmer_ to a gumiho. “I’m a banker. An investment banker.”

“I see,” Sunggyu says, even though Woohyun knows he doesn’t. It’s then that Woohyun finally notices the kinds of clothes Sunggyu’s wearing. They’re thin white robes, and Woohyun’s seen something like these before in some of the sageuks he’s watched.

“What kind of clothes are you wearing?” Woohyun asks as he turns to face the wall and tugs his t-shirt over his head. He’s used to changing in his own room, and he’s not going to let some nine-tailed fox spirit distract him from his normal schedule.

“Oh. These are not my normal clothes. These are, ah, the clothes they put me in. When they sealed me.” Sunggyu’s tone is bitter now, and when Woohyun turns to look at him, buttoning his shirt up, Sunggyu’s frowning, his lips pressed together thinly.

“Who’s _they_?” Woohyun asks, and he’s fairly certain he already knows, based on where he’d found Sunggyu, in a Buddhist temple miles from Seoul.

“Those monks. The ones that King Jeongjo sent. They put me in these before they locked me into the scrolls.” Sunggyu stares off at a point somewhere above Woohyun’s head, then he grins at Woohyun. “I am usually wearing much nicer robes than these, but I think I may have lost them. These will do for now, though.”

“Would you like to wear some of my clothes?” Woohyun asks, opening his other closet to show Sunggyu the array of shirts and pants he has for casual wear when he’s not at work, but Sunggyu wrinkles his nose. “That’s a no, then?”

“The clothes I am wearing now are far more comfortable than yours will ever be,” Sunggyu snorts. He keeps watching Woohyun even as he’s pulling on his socks and toeing on his shoes. “You are leaving now?”

“Yeah, I’m going. Don’t burn down my apartment, okay?” Woohyun says, and he’s only half-joking. He looks at Sunggyu to make sure he’s listening. “Seriously, don’t burn anything down.”

“I promise you, I will not burn down your apartment.” Sunggyu beams at him, still seated in the center of his bed with all of Woohyun’s blankets piled up around him. “Enjoy your investment bankering!”

Woohyun pauses at the doorway before he turns just slightly so he can see the way Sunggyu’s ears twitch just slightly in the breeze coming in from the window. If he can ignore how Sunggyu had basically barged into his life, he’s kind of cute. Woohyun decides to be nice and says, “Have fun at home. I’ll be back soon.”

 

It’s lunchtime at the office when Woohyun realizes he hadn’t shown Sunggyu where the food was. He’s halfway to getting his phone to call home and tell Sunggyu where all of the frozen dinners and dumplings are, but he remembers Sunggyu probably doesn’t have a clue what a phone is or how to use it.

He stares at his desk for so long with his phone in hand, wondering if he’s really going to let Sunggyu starve, when Myungsoo pokes his head over the divider between the desks in the office they share and asks, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Woohyun lies, placing his phone face down on his desk. “Hey, do you remember what that one auditing firm wanted from us? Some files, right? For the meeting tomorrow morning?”

Myungsoo gets distracted talking about the guy from the auditing firm they work with and how he’ll only give them the files they need if Myungsoo agrees to go on a date with him, and Woohyun nods and smiles along as needed. He doesn’t get why Myungsoo just doesn’t go along with it, especially since he keeps talking on and on about this guy when he never talks about anything but his cat or his camera.

Woohyun sighs as Myungsoo launches into yet another rant. It’s going to be a long day.

It’s nearly ten when Woohyun gets home after being stuck in traffic during rush hour, his briefcase full of cases he has to work on and his phone blinking with appointments he has to get to. He hasn’t eaten since lunchtime, and when he steps through his front door, Sunggyu’s standing there.

“You are late.” Sunggyu’s frowning, his lips pressed into a thin line, and Woohyun doesn’t have time for this right now. There are spreadsheets he has to fix up, and he wants to get at least ten more proposals read before he turns in for the night.

“I know, get used to it,” Woohyun sighs, pushing past Sunggyu on his way to his bedroom so he can shuck off his suit jacket and hang it up. He turns so he can meet Sunggyu’s eyes. “I have to work, Sunggyu. It’s how I can make enough money so you can live here.”

“But—” Sunggyu grabs his arm as he’s about to take off his slacks, but he gently pushes Sunggyu’s hands off of him. “But it is so dark out now. You should not be working even after the sun has set. What kind of business is this? When do you have fun, though? When do you play?”

“I don’t. It’s alright, Sunggyu.” Woohyun’s down to his boxers and the wifebeater he wears underneath his dress shirt now, and he looks at Sunggyu with an earnestness he hopes Sunggyu will understand. “It’s fine.”

“Alright.” Sunggyu bites his lip. “But here, let me.” He moves to stand in front of Woohyun and gently steers him backwards toward the bed until the backs of Woohyun’s knees hit the bed. “Let me do this for you.”

Then Sunggyu’s hands are on his shoulders and kneading out all of the tension that’s been deeply rooted in his muscles since day one, and Woohyun falls asleep before he even feels his eyes closing.

Woohyun wakes up in the morning feeling more well-rested than he’s felt in the past few years. He stretches his arms, trying to shield his eyes from the bright light of the sun, when it hits him. He didn’t wake up to an alarm, which means his phone hadn’t gone off at all. He scrambles for the small bedside alarm clock he has on the drawer and picks it up to read it.

It’s two in the afternoon. Woohyun’s not only six hours late for work, but he’s also missed dozens of calls, forgotten to sit in on a very important meeting, and not shown up for one of the quarterly department-wide conferences. He stares at the time over and over and again and again, as if looking at the numbers more will make them change somehow. They don’t.

He dials his boss frantically, and as soon as he hears the line being picked up, the words are out of his mouth before he knows it. “Sir, I am so sorry, I’ll be there in a second—”

“Oh, Nam. I thought you were sick, so I marked you down as using one of your sick days.”

No, no, no, no, _no_. Woohyun knows he can’t use up a sick day if he wants to get promoted. He’s been saving up months and months of vacation time and sick days just so he can show to the company that he’s dependent and reliable.

“No, sir, I’m not sick. I’ll come in soon.” Woohyun knows his voice is getting desperate, pleading, but he doesn’t care. He _needs_  this promotion, he _needs_  it.

“Well, don’t, Nam. Stay at home, get some rest, and don’t come in to work today.”

The line goes dead, and Woohyun stares at the phone in his hand for what must be an eternity but only is actually a few minutes, disbelieving and in shock. Then what happened last night plays again in Woohyun’s head, and he remembers walking into his apartment and seeing Sunggyu and changing out of his clothes and into just his wifebeater and boxers and Sunggyu massaging his shoulders. That must be it.

He storms out of his own room, throwing the door of the guest room open. He’s not there. He makes his way down the hallway, and he sees a pair of red ears peeking out of the couch.

“You did this,” Woohyun says when he rounds the corner to stand directly in front of Sunggyu, and he looks up, his ears twitching in the breeze. “You, seriously, why would you do this to me?”

“You needed to sleep,” Sunggyu says simply, a small smile on his face. “Did you enjoy your rest?”

Woohyun could scream, but he wants to remain as calm and as in control as he can. “No, because now I’ve missed meetings and conferences and presentations, so _thanks a lot._ “

Sunggyu only smiles up at him, and Woohyun’s had enough. He surges forward to grab Sunggyu by the collar of his robes, and he shakes the gumiho in his grip. “Listen, I don’t know how things went in the Bronze Age or whatever time you came from, but this is now. This is the present. I was just on track to being promoted, and you. _You_. You ruined it for me. I hope you’re happy, because you’ve just ruined my life. Congratulations. Please just leave me alone from now on, unless you can’t seem to figure out how to do that either.”

And without another word, he storms back into his room and slams the door behind him, loud and strong enough that the walls shiver. Woohyun groans and pulls out his laptop to go over some of the spreadsheets he and Myungsoo had been working on. If he isn’t going to get his promotion this way, he’ll get it another way.

It’s nighttime before he knows it, and when Woohyun goes to the kitchen to make himself a salad, Sunggyu isn’t there. The door of the guest room is locked, and Woohyun hopes, fervently, that he’s disappeared, that he’ll stop being such a nuisance to him and his dreams, that he’ll go back to the shrine he came from already.

The salad is bland and tasteless, but Woohyun forces it down as he’s making some edits and changes. He falls asleep that night, cold and lonely and acutely aware that there’s small crimson and gold hair everywhere on his pristine white sheets.

He wakes up the next morning at five so he can get some of his morning workout routine in. He’s sweaty by the time he’s done at six, and he showers quickly before he heads to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee and a granola bar for energy. Instead, what he finds there is a plate stacked high with rice cakes and a scroll made of parchment tied up neatly next to it.

His interest and curiosity piqued, Woohyun takes the scroll and unrolls it. There, written in looping black calligraphy, is _I deeply apologize for the inconvenience I have caused you. It was not in my intent to do harm to you or to what you hold dear. I understand now that investment bankering is more important to you than sleep is, and I shall change my behavior towards you to reflect that. Please accept these rice cakes, as simple as they may be, as my most sincere and most heartfelt apologies for having interrupted your investment bankering._

Woohyun stares at the parchment for too long, and he stares at it until the coffee in his mug goes cold, and he stares at it until the time comes for him to leave for work, and then he spends the entire drive to work thinking about the letter.

For lunchtime, Woohyun takes out a bento box and unpacks some of the rice cakes that had been on the plate earlier this morning. He gingerly places one into his mouth, but as he chews, the more he realizes that there are a complex melody of flavors, and it’s nothing like what Woohyun’s ever tasted before. When he’s done, he stares down at the empty box and wonders just why he’s so energetic now when he’d been so lethargic just before.

Maybe he does owe Sunggyu an apology.

 

He manages to get Myungsoo to cover for what he needs to do at the end of his shift, promising that he’ll pay Myungsoo back whenever he wants. Woohyun leaves two hours early, and he’s home before eight. Sunggyu’s not sitting on the couch and idly playing with the motors controlling the footrests, and Woohyun guesses that he’s still in the guest room. He doesn’t know why, but he gets a sudden feeling that Sunggyu’s sitting on the bed, his knees pulled up to his chest.

Woohyun knocks on the door. “Sunggyu? Are you there?”

It takes a few moments for the reply to come, but when it does, Woohyun only notices how hesitant and measured the tone behind the words is. “Yes? I am here in the room.”

“Sunggyu, can you come out?” Woohyun asks before he’s stepping away from the door so Sunggyu can have some space. Sunggyu opens the door almost immediately, and he closes it behind him before he folds his hands behind his back.

“I apologize—” Sunggyu starts, but Woohyun cuts him off.

“No, I’m sorry. I lost my temper with you even though you really don’t know any of the customs or rules of this time. I think I really should’ve tried to understand you more.” Woohyun grins at Sunggyu. “You were just trying to get me to sleep, right?”

Sunggyu nods. “Yes, we usually sleep for half of the day.” He looks back up at Woohyun’s eyes, searching. “You seemed to sleep for just a fraction of what i do. So I was worried for your health.”

“I get that,” Woohyun says. “But I really, really do have to go to work. It’ll be a huge disaster for me if I don’t go, because then I might lose my job and I’ll be unemployed. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Sunggyu’s eyes widen and he shakes his head, and Woohyun smiles at him. “So please don’t use any of your gumiho magic to put me to sleep anymore. Maybe on the weekends, but not before I have work.”

“But,” Sunggyu starts as he fidgets with his fingers. He meets Woohyun’s eyes squarely. “I did nothing of that sort. It was all you that was tired.”

Woohyun stares back at him, taken aback, and he realizes that he doesn’t know how to respond. He clears his throat, and as if on cue, his stomach rumbles. He grins sheepishly at Sunggyu. “Would you like to get some dinner?”

Woohyun chooses a nice barbecue place near his apartment. It’s an all you can eat style eatery, where he can order whatever types of meats he wants to and then grill it. He thinks it’ll be a good choice for someone like Sunggyu.

He’d explained to Woohyun during the drive there that he doesn’t really need to eat. He’d used to, but then he’d eaten so many human livers before he’d been locked in the scroll that he’s sated and full for the next few decades, and Woohyun didn’t know whether to be startled or to be relieved.

“But,” Sunggyu had said with a smile showing off his pointed canines, “I would not object to eating more meat.”

He’d thrown a coat on Sunggyu since he’d refused to change into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, enough coverage so that anyone looking would think that he’s just very into wearing traditional clothing. The tails and the ears aren’t a problem, since Sunggyu can make them appear and reappear at will. Sunggyu sits opposite him in the booth, and they teach each other how to play the games they’d grown up with as they wait for their food to come.

Woohyun’s in the middle of teaching Sunggyu how to play the mandu game when their first orders of meat arrive. “Wait,” Woohyun says, without looking up from the grill, “I have to cook this first.”

He hears swallowing, and then when he looks up, an entire plate of bulgogi is missing, and there’s a small droplet of blood dripping from the corner of Sunggyu’s mouth.

“Sunggyu,” Woohyun says, exasperated, then he drops his voice to nearly a whisper. “I told you, you can’t eat raw meat in public. Please just let me finish grilling so we can pretend you’re actually. You know.” _Human._

“But this meat is delicious,” Sunggyu whines, but Woohyun shoots him a hard look. Sunggyu’s lower lip juts out when he pouts. “Alright. I agree to your terms.”

From then on, it’s fairly smooth sailing, with Woohyun grilling the meat and placing equal portions on his and Sunggyu’s plates, but it gets even better when they bring out the yukhwe.

“What is this?” Sunggyu asks, his eyes shining as the plate is placed right in front of him.

“It’s a dish made with raw beef. It’s been seasoned and salted already, but you can eat it as it is.” Woohyun returns Sunggyu’s beaming grin and turns back to the galbi he’d been grilling. He’s enjoying this more than he thought he would, and it doesn’t help that the company he’s with is surprisingly witty and easy to talk to.

They both come out of the restaurant stuffed, and Woohyun holds his stomach and groans. “I’m so full. Why did we eat so much?”

“Because you said that we should, and I quote, get our money’s worth.” Sunggyu stares back at him, and he coughs.

“Oh right, I did.” Then, as if the thought’s just occurred to him, Woohyun whirls around so he can look at Sunggyu. “I’d been meaning to ask, but where did you get the rice cakes from? And the calligraphy brush? And the parchment? I don’t have any of that stuff inside my apartment, so how did you—?”

“Magic,” Sunggyu says, easily and simply, shrugging. Woohyun watches the way his cheeks puff out whenever he smiles like that, watches the way he looks back at him one last time before he’s darting ahead to look for the car, and he thinks that it isn’t so bad after all.

 

They settle into an easy routine. Woohyun shows Sunggyu how to use the stove and the microwave, and although Woohyun doesn’t really mind either way, Sunggyu insists on cooking for him before and after he gets back from work. It’s a different kind of feeling, one he’s not used to, when he has a lunch ready for him in the morning.

It had started out with just rice cakes, but as the days go by, Sunggyu seems to be learning. After Woohyun teaches him how to use the rice cooker, his lunches become rice bowls with some rice cakes and vegetables on the side. Myungsoo takes notice of this, and one day as Woohyun takes out his lunch to start eating, he leans over Woohyun’s desk.

“You got a girlfriend?” Myungsoo asks, blunt and matter of fact in the way that he always is, and Woohyun nearly chokes on a rice cake. They’re covered with soy sauce today instead of gochujang, and he thinks that he’ll have to tell Sunggyu to lighten up on the seasonings when he gets home tonight.

“No,” Woohyun says slowly, trying to figure out an excuse. Of course Myungsoo’s noticed that he has home-cooked meals now when he’d always just gotten a coffee and a granola bar to keep him awake for the rest of the day before.

Myungsoo’s eyes narrow. “A boyfriend?”

“No!” Woohyun splutters. “Where are you getting all of these ideas?”

“Look.” Myungsoo points at the packed lunch in front of him. “You’re eating actual human food instead of your gross energy and protein bars.” He puts a hand up to stop Woohyun when he opens his mouth to object. “Seriously, something’s up. You’re a lot happier than you used to be, and you leave right away when you need to clock out. Before, you used to just stay here until the boss had to tell you to leave.”

“It’s nothing,” Woohyun lies. But now that Myungsoo’s mentioned it, he can’t stop thinking about it. He hadn’t even noticed he's started to leave earlier and earlier day after day, and he realizes that he hasn’t thought about wanting a promotion for a while now.

“Also, when did you get a cat?” Myungsoo asks suddenly. He leans in closer to Woohyun, looking intently at his jacket.

“I don’t have a cat, though.” Woohyun follows Myungsoo’s gaze to where short red hairs are sticking to his jacket. _Fuck_. They must’ve been left behind from when Sunggyu had spent that first night rolling around in Woohyun’s bed. He hasn’t cleaned it since, so it’s not too out of the ordinary for him to still have those hairs on him. He clears his throat. “My neighbor has a cat. He’s really annoying and likes to get his hair all over me. So annoying.”

Myungsoo doesn’t really look convinced, but Woohyun shoos him off. “Let me eat in peace, Kim. Shoo. Stop being so nosy all the time. Also, don’t you have that guy from the auditing firm to worry about?”

Myungsoo flushes and goes back to sulking at his desk, and Woohyun grins. The food Sunggyu makes tastes better when he can properly enjoy it, anyway.

He spends most of the commute home that night thinking about what Myungsoo had said. He knows that if he goes back and looks at the times he’d clocked in and out, he’ll see that he’s been getting to work later and later and leaving earlier and earlier. He still puts in enough work to meet weekly quotas, but the amount of time he spends at the office per day is rapidly dwindling, and he’s surprised to realize that he doesn’t really care. The him of before would’ve forced himself to work harder, but now, he’s content to do as much as he has to so that he can live. Other than that, there are things in his life that he would rather spend time doing.

“I’m back,” Woohyun says, toeing off his shoes and stepping through the doorway.

“Welcome home,” Sunggyu calls out, sprawled on the couch. He’s levitating small balls of foxfire around in the air, the white-blue balls dancing around above their heads. Woohyun knows he should be more concerned that Sunggyu’s going to burn his entire apartment down, but he doesn’t really care. He watches the way the flames flicker in and out of existence, and he wonders if Sunggyu’s going to do the same, if Sunggyu’s going to blink out of his life just as suddenly as he’d appeared in it.

Just that thought fills Woohyun with a feeling he can’t describe, and after he changes back into more comfortable clothes, he settles down onto the couch next to Sunggyu. He’s almost completely given up his routine of working until midnight as well, and he’s started just leaving what he has to do for work at the office instead of bringing it home.

“Are you tired?” Sunggyu asks as Woohyun leans against his shoulder.

“Shhh.” Woohyun takes the remote and turns the channel to something other than the news he’d been watching this morning. They sit there in relative silence, but it’s not awkward. Instead, it’s something comfortable now, the way that they sit together, their shoulders pressed together, and Sunggyu is warm by his side.

“The blue man is trying to wrap something around a box. Why?” Sunggyu asks, and Woohyun has to stifle a laugh. The first time Sunggyu had seen the television, he’d yelped and jumped five feet into the air, and Woohyun had to explain to him that no, there weren’t tiny people inside his metal box.

“It’s just part of the game,” Woohyun says, and when one of Sunggyu’s tails lands in his lap, he instinctively starts petting it, running his fingers through the soft fur.

Sunggyu gives him a narrow look even as he leans into the touch. “My tails are not toys, I hope you realize.”

“I know,” Woohyun says, using the tip of one of the tails to brush Sunggyu on the nose. “But they’re fun to play with, aren’t they?”

Sunggyu sighs, deep and long-suffering, and Woohyun grins with triumph.

 

It’s a chilly autumn day when Sunggyu puts the coat on and goes into Woohyun’s room to smack him awake. “Ow! What are you doing, Sunggyu?” Woohyun clutches the pillow closer to himself, burrowing deeper under the covers. “It’s Saturday, leave me alone.”

“We are going sightseeing!” Sunggyu announces, putting his hands on his hips, and Woohyun peeks above the blanket. Sightseeing? What could Sunggyu possibly know about Seoul in this day and age, three hundred years after he’d lived?

But Woohyun’s curious to see where Sunggyu wants to go, so he pulls on pants and throws on a sweater, and when he goes to the door, Sunggyu’s waiting. “You are so slow,” he huffs, grabbing Woohyun’s wrist and pushing the door open.

Woohyun follows, and he listens to Sunggyu talk the entire time. Sunggyu’s learned how to wear what Woohyun calls non-gumiho people clothes now, and when Sunggyu’s walking in front of him, his strides long and his steps quick, with a sweater and a coat and jeans on, he looks like just another guy.

“Listen, there is this garden that I know that is super beautiful during the autumn season. It was built by King Jeongjo in honor of his mother, Lady Hyekyeong, and it is so beautiful, you will not believe your eyes,” Sunggyu says, and Woohyun’s content to just walk beside him. “The flowers and the trees planted there are so rare that people came from all over Joseon Korea to look at the garden.”

As Sunggyu talks on and on, the more Woohyun starts to get a dawning feeling of dread. Sunggyu’s going off of his instincts, following the path that he’d known hundreds of years ago, but the city’s changed so much since then. Woohyun knows this area of the city is the industrial one where skyscrapers touch the sky, but he keeps quiet. Maybe he’ll be proven wrong.

In his excitement, Sunggyu’s walking so fast that Woohyun knows that he doesn’t see the surroundings around him, that he doesn’t see how there are barely any trees, let alone flowers and grasses, around them. Sunggyu jerks to a stop, and Woohyun nearly trips onto the ground.

“Behold!” Sunggyu says, grinning at Woohyun before he turns to look at where the garden is. Woohyun knows the exact moment Sunggyu realizes, because his grip on Woohyun’s wrist slackens and his face falls. They’re not standing in front of a beautiful garden. They’re standing in front of an office building, its exterior drab and gray, and Woohyun knows that if they open the doors, there will be office workers poring over paperwork.

“But it was here,” Sunggyu says, his voice small and quiet, and he doesn’t object when Woohyun laces their fingers together to tug him away. “It was here.”

“Let’s go home,” Woohyun says, trying to make Sunggyu understand that he _knows_ , and Sunggyu follows. He’s quiet the entire way home, and Woohyun squeezes his hand more tightly, hoping that just this will be enough for now. When they get home, Sunggyu locks himself in the guest room, and Woohyun spends what feels like hours just staring at the closed door. He knows better than to bother Sunggyu when he’s like this.

Woohyun suddenly gets an idea. He doesn’t know how feasible it is or if it’s even going to work, but he gets on his laptop and searches up what Sunggyu must’ve been talking about earlier. There are records of a garden near where they’d gone, and Woohyun spends the next few hours scouring the internet and writing down what kinds of flowers were in the garden.

The next morning, Sunggyu’s door is still closed, and Woohyun has his fist poised and ready to knock before he holds back. There’ll be time for that later. Not many places are open this early on a Sunday morning, but he drives to the nearest nursery that’s open and rattles off the list of flowers he’d written down the night before.

He comes home with a small planter and bags full of seeds, his arms straining with how heavy everything is, and he finishes setting up the planter on the balcony connected to his apartment just before dinner. He wipes his hands clean of dirt and wood shavings before he knocks on Sunggyu’s door.

“Sunggyu,” he tries. No response. “I have something for you.”

When Sunggyu comes out, his face is drawn and he looks like he hasn’t slept. Woohyun’s about to ask if he’s okay when he shakes his head. “I am fine,” he says hurriedly. “Please do not worry. What do you have for me?”

Woohyun leads Sunggyu to the planter, and he shows Sunggyu the bags of seeds he’d bought.

“I know this isn’t anything like the garden you had back in your day, but I tried to find flowers that were kind of similar to the flowers back then. We can move the planter inside if you want to plant them now, or we can leave them outside if you want to wait until spring.” Woohyun swallows. “I hope I didn’t step over any boundaries, but I thought you might like to have these flowers with you all the time.”

“No. No, this is perfect,” Sunggyu whispers. His eyes are shining when he looks up at Woohyun. “I would like to plant these in the spring, please.”

Sunggyu pitches forward so suddenly that Woohyun almost drops all of the seeds, and Sunggyu’s ears tickle Woohyun’s face when he draws him in for a hug.

“Thank you,” Sunggyu murmurs into Woohyun’s ear. “Thank you so much for bringing my life back to me.”

As he stands there, running his hands over Sunggyu’s back and feeling his warmth in his arms, Woohyun thinks that he should be the one thanking Sunggyu for bringing the light back into his life.

 

One night, when Woohyun comes home from work, all of the lights are off. He nearly drops the bag of doughnuts he’d bought for Sunggyu on the way back, scrambling to turn on the lights. This hasn’t happened since Sunggyu had appeared in his apartment that one afternoon, and Woohyun starts opening all of the doors down the hallway, checking the bathroom and the bedrooms. He’s not there.

“Sunggyu?” He calls. No response. A cold chill starts to set into his bones when he realizes that Sunggyu’s gone, that he won’t wake up to see Sunggyu in the kitchen with his lunch, that he won’t have to tell Sunggyu to stop eating all of the raw meat anymore.

But then it feels like there’s a voice in his head telling him to go outside, and Woohyun has no idea where it’s coming from, but he follows. He leaves his apartment and goes down cramped alleyways and well-lit streets, walking where he feels like going. His feet seem to be moving on his own, but then the voice in his head tells him that he’s getting closer, that he’s almost there, and Woohyun thinks, deliriously, that it sounds a little bit like Sunggyu’s voice.

He stops in front of a darkened alley in the back of a restaurant, and it feels like he’s breathing above water when he shakes his head to clear it. He wonders just how he’d gotten here when he’s never been in this area of the city before he sees it. There’s a dark shadow at the end of the alleyway, and Woohyun hesitates before walking towards it. It’s not until he’s standing just feet away from it that he smells the overwhelming stench of blood, and when the moonlight shifts, Woohyun gasps.

It’s a fox with auburn fur, its ears and tails tipped with white. Its fur is matted down with blood and dirt, and it looks like it’s close to dying, its breath coming out in short puffs. Woohyun looks at the way its tails keep flickering in and out of existence, at the way it almost looks like there are nine at one point, and he knows.

“Sunggyu?” He whispers, and when the fox opens its eyes to stare up at him, he collapses on his knees in front of it. “Oh fuck, Sunggyu, are you alright? Holy shit, what do I do, please don’t die—”

_Take me home, please._

The words flash into Woohyun’s mind so quickly that he knows that he hadn’t been the one to think them up, and he stares at Sunggyu. “Was that you—?”

_Please._

Woohyun doesn’t waste any more time. He shrugs off his coat and drapes it around Sunggyu, taking care not to shake him too much, and he gently lifts him up off the ground and into his arms. Sunggyu is heavy and warm in his arms, and he knows that blood is going to get everywhere on his clothes and on him. He doesn’t care, though.

He makes it home in almost record time, and after he lays Sunggyu out on the ground, he runs to the bathroom to grab towels and supplies. When he comes back, Sunggyu’s a human again, his ears and tails fainter then ever, and Woohyun can see that he’s bleeding from his chest and stomach. There are scratches up and down his arms and legs, and Woohyun swallows. “What happened?”

“I wished to go out for a run, but some dogs found me, and I could not escape in time.” Sunggyu closes his eyes. “Stupid dogs.”

He kneels next to Sunggyu, dabbing at the wounds with the towels, before he feels Sunggyu’s hand on his wrist.

“Stop,” he says hoarsely, and Woohyun stills.

“I’m just trying to help, Sunggyu, you’re going to _die_.” Woohyun’s hands are trembling now, and he can’t stop it the way his hands shake as he tries to soak up more of the blood.

“Woohyun, I have to tell you something. Please listen. Please stop moving around.” Sunggyu’s eyes are so earnest, so serious, that Woohyun puts down the towels and sits still. “Do you remember the time that you found me? And you set me free? In the shrine? A few months ago?”

Woohyun nods. It seems like almost another lifetime now, but when he thinks back to it, he can still pull back how he’d seen the shrine at Yongjusa and gone in, not realizing that that moment would change the course of his life.

“You died,” Sunggyu says, and he reaches for Woohyun’s hand, as if he can console him somehow. Woohyun gasps, and Sunggyu’s eyes fix on his. “When you fell, you hit your head, and you would have died forever, if it were not for my intervention.”

“But how? Why?” Woohyun doesn’t remember this happening at all, but now that Sunggyu brings it up, he thinks he can remember falling and blacking out, but nothing more.

“Gumihos—we have these beads. They are an extension of our life force, you could say. When I did that, I became bonded to you, which is why I could not leave. I also was allowed to nudge your actions and thoughts.” Woohyun remembers the way he’d walked without thinking to where Sunggyu was, the way he’d been thinking things that weren’t his, and he realizes that it all makes sense. Sunggyu swallows. “I gave mine to you so that you could live, but I would like it back now, if it is alright with you. I would really like to continue living, so—”

“How do I give it back to you?” Woohyun asks, crawling closer to Sunggyu, moving so that he’s hovering almost directly over Sunggyu. Then he feels Sunggyu reaching upwards, his fingers finding their way to the back of Woohyun’s neck, dragging him downwards, and then Sunggyu’s kissing him.

His lips are soft, and as Woohyun closes his eyes to kiss him back, he can feel it. There’s power building within him, like a fluttering in his chest, and he can feel it leaving his body. He’s about to pull back, but Sunggyu keeps him there, tilting his head and deepening their kiss. The fluttering builds and builds and suddenly it’s gone, and then Sunggyu pulls back, licking his lips.

As Woohyun watches, the wounds all over Sunggyu’s body start to shrink, and then they disappear. His skin looks like he’d never been injured in the first place. Sunggyu pushes himself up onto his elbows, and then he drags himself into a sitting position to he can stare at Woohyun before he’s scooting closer and closer.

“Thank you, Woohyun.” Sunggyu smiles, his eyes crinkling into crescent moons, and Woohyun’s throat is suddenly dry at the memory of Sunggyu’s pink lips against his. Sunggyu moves even closer, and when he opens his eyes so he can look at Woohyun again, Woohyun swears that he can almost see the reflection of the moon in those eyes. “I am glad that you have allowed me to keep living here.”

“I’d do anything to keep you here, don’t worry,” Woohyun whispers before he closes the distance between their lips. Sunggyu’s arms wind around his neck again, and he realizes that this, Sunggyu in his arms, is what he’s been waiting for his entire life.

 

It’s a snowy winter day when Sunggyu marches into Woohyun’s room. They haven’t done much since that night; work has been getting busier and busier, and although Sunggyu always welcomes Woohyun at the door with a hug and a kiss, Woohyun’s always too tired to do anything else.

“Woohyun,” he announces. “I wish to sleep here from now on.”

Woohyun looks up from where he’d been searching up more biennial flowers for the planter on his laptop, and he scoots over. “Sure,” he says, moving his laptop and phone aside to make room. “Come on in.”

Sunggyu doesn’t really walk towards the bed as he jumps onto it, nearly colliding with Woohyun and knocking him over. Sunggyu pushes Woohyun to lie on his back, and Woohyun watches the way his tails swish idly in the air behind him.

“Yes?” Woohyun asks, reaching up so he can brush his knuckles against Sunggyu’s cheek, and Sunggyu closes his eyes, leaning into it.

“I missed you,” Sunggyu says, dropping his head into Woohyun’s shoulder and rubbing his forehead against Woohyun’s shirt. “So much.”

“I missed you too.” Woohyun grins even though Sunggyu can’t see it, patting Sunggyu’s back and feeling the tension evaporate from his body. “Do you want to look at some of the flowers I was going to get for the planter so we can put them in when it’s spring?”

At Sunggyu’s nod, he reaches over for the laptop and drags it closer so Sunggyu can see the screen. Sunggyu stares at the screen before settling back more comfortably onto Woohyun’s chest. “The first, the third, the fifth, and the sixth ones, please.”

“Noted,” Woohyun says against Sunggyu’s hair. Sunggyu’s ears twitch, and when they tickle Woohyun’s nose, he sneezes. Sunggyu lifts his head up to give him a dirty look, and Woohyun laughs. “Sorry.”

They lie there for a while, Woohyun running his hands through Sunggyu’s hair, and Sunggyu’s so still that Woohyun’s not sure if he’s even awake. “Sunggyu?” He whispers.

“Shut up,” Sunggyu mumbles, and Woohyun doesn’t even try to bite back the smile. There’s a lot Sunggyu’s learned from him, but Woohyun doesn’t think anything will be as funny as seeing and hearing a gumiho use twenty-first century colloquialisms.

“I have a present for you.”

“A present?” Woohyun can tell by the way that Sunggyu’s ears perk up that he’s immediately interested, and he pushes Sunggyu off of him just slightly. Sunggyu sits back on his heels, folding his legs under him and putting his hands in his lap as he waits for Woohyun to get the present.

Woohyun’s hands are just slightly sweaty on the handles of the bag. He’d bought this on a whim, but now he’s not entirely sure if Sunggyu will even like it. He just hopes Sunggyu doesn’t think he’s making fun of him. When he takes it out, Sunggyu looks at him with confusion. “A brush? But you already have so many of these?”

“No,” Woohyun says, settling down on the bed next to Sunggyu. He raises the brush to eye level, letting Sunggyu see how delicate and fine the bristles are. “It’s a fur brush. It’s not for your hair, it’s for your tails. Didn’t you say you were annoyed of getting things stuck in them, like snow or twigs? Or we can get some of the tangles in them out now?”

The confusion in Sunggyu’s eyes is completely replaced by curiosity and excitement now, and he moves to lie across Woohyun’s lap so that his tails are in Woohyun’s face. He turns his head so he can grin at Woohyun and say, “Brush me then, Woohyun. Show me what you are useful for.”

Woohyun doesn’t back down from a challenge. He curls a hand around the base of the tails, and with long and purposeful pulls, he uses his other hand to brush Sunggyu’s tails from base to tip free of tangles and other things he might’ve picked up on the ground. He’s halfway through the tails, on number five, when he notices that Sunggyu’s panting lightly, and he stops. “Sunggyu? Are you alright?”

“I am fine,” Sunggyu murmurs, and his voice is hazy, like he’s dreaming. “Please continue.”

Woohyun picks the brush up again, but he goes slower this time, keeping his eyes on Sunggyu for any change in his behavior. He’s on the seventh tail now, and when he tightens his grip on the base of the tails just slightly since Sunggyu’s started moving around a lot, he hears it. A long, low moan.

He stares down at Sunggyu in shock, and Sunggyu doesn’t meet his eyes, covering his face with his hands. “I apologize, that was very unbecoming of me, please disregard that—”

“Sunggyu, are you turned on?” Woohyun reaches downwards so he can gently pry Sunggyu’s hands off of his face. He’s flushed a deep red, and he stares at a point behind Woohyun’s head instead of answering. Sunggyu shifts just a little bit, and Woohyun can feel something pressing into his thigh. “You _are_.”

“Please do not look at me,” Sunggyu mutters as Woohyun drags him upwards so that he’s sitting on Woohyun’s lap and facing him.

“How can I stop looking at you when you’re like this? Sunggyu, can you show me your face?” Sunggyu looks at him underneath his eyelashes, and Woohyun can feel arousal start to build when he sees Sunggyu like that, his eyes half-lidded and his cheeks pink. “Was it because of me?”

Sunggyu nods, short, and his hands ball into fists at his sides.

“Was it because of this?” Woohyun reaches behind Sunggyu, and he hesitates for just a moment before he curls his fingers around the base of Sunggyu’s tails again. Sunggyu shakes, his head dropping onto Woohyun’s shoulder, and he breathes out in harsh and ragged gasps.

“My tails, ah, the very base of them, they’re very, um, sensitive to touch,” Sunggyu murmurs into Woohyun’s shoulder, and Woohyun pulls him back just slightly so he can see Sunggyu’s face. “When you touch them, ah, it makes me like this.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” They’re so close now, close enough to kiss, but he stops himself.

“Because I wanted you to touch me,” Sunggyu whispers, and Woohyun feels the last shred of control he had evaporate with those words. He surges forward to crush his lips against Sunggyu’s, and he feels Sunggyu return it with an equally insistent fervor.

Woohyun tightens his grip on Sunggyu’s tails, squeezing, and Sunggyu moans into the kiss, shuddering. Sunggyu’s rutting against him now, riding his thigh and making small noises in the back of his throat, and Woohyun’s suddenly aware of how he’s almost uncomfortably hard now, his cock making a tent in the boxers he’d worn to sleep. Sunggyu’s robes have ridden up, and although they still cover everything else, they’ve shifted so his legs are completely exposed, and Woohyun feels his throat becoming drier and drier the more he stares at the long expanse of skin in front of him.

“Please,” Sunggyu begs, and he looks so broken, so wrecked, with his hair messed up around his face and a red flush high on his cheeks and on his neck, that Woohyun can’t resist. He doesn’t need to be told twice to grab Sunggyu and push him onto his back against the pillows, or to lower his mouth to Sunggyu’s neck and start sucking kisses into the skin there. He pulls back so he can look at what he’s done, and he knows they’ll bruise tomorrow, all of the marks he’s leaving on Sunggyu now. He just wishes Sunggyu went outside more, so people could see what he’s doing to him.

“Woohyun,” Sunggyu says again, “ _please._ ”

Woohyun leans back again. Sunggyu’s in front of him, his eyes wet and his mouth open and panting, and his cheeks are pink and his neck is a splotchy red. Woohyun reaches for the tie of Sunggyu’s robes, and they fall apart without any resistance at all. His chest is pale, save for the flush across his collarbones, and, except for a light scar across his stomach, there aren’t any markings anywhere on him. Woohyun needs to fix that.

He reaches over to his bedside table for the lube, and he pops the cap open to coat his fingers with it. When he turns back to Sunggyu and gently moves one of his legs aside, Sunggyu opens up, his legs spreading. Woohyun circles his slick finger around Sunggyu’s entrance, and he watches the way Sunggyu takes him in. He adds another finger, then another, and before he knows it, he has Sunggyu twisting on his fingers, trying to get him even further in. He scissors his fingers, leaning forward so he can kiss Sunggyu again, wet and open-mouthed and sloppy.

“You’re so beautiful,” Woohyun breathes out as he pulls his fingers out of Sunggyu, and then he’s pulling his shirt over his head and off. He does the same to his boxers, kicking them onto the floor, and he watches the way Sunggyu’s eyes rake hungrily from his arms down his chest and stomach, down to where he’s hard and leaking against his stomach.

“No, you are,” Sunggyu says, and he reaches for Woohyun, “so handsome.”

Woohyun brushes a lock of hair away from Sunggyu’s face before he leans in to kiss him again. He pulls back so he can slick himself up, and he strokes himself again, just to make sure he’s ready enough. Woohyun hikes Sunggyu’s ankles over his shoulders before he pushes into him in just one thrust, bottoming out against Sunggyu’s ass.

“I have wanted you for so long,” Sunggyu whispers against Woohyun’s neck, and his breath hitches with the next thrust, one that makes the bed creak underneath them. “So long.”

Woohyun hopes that the kiss he presses to Sunggyu’s lips, long and deep, can convey everything he wants to say to him. _I’ve wanted you for a long time, too. A very long time._

Sunggyu’s boneless after he comes, and he wraps his arms around Woohyun’s neck and demands to be carried into the bathroom to be cleaned up. “Bossy,” Woohyun mutters with a smile on his face, and Sunggyu turns his head so he can kiss the smile off.

“I know,” Sunggyu says, with a self-assured and confident smirk on his lips, and Woohyun falls just a little bit harder for him.

Sunggyu splashes water back at him when they’re in the bathtub, his back resting against Woohyun’s chest. His tails are in Woohyun’s face again, but he doesn’t mind, not really. Woohyun helps Sunggyu lather up his tails to clean them off, and he pauses.

“So the tips are okay?” Woohyun asks, his hands rubbing shampoo over the tails, and Sunggyu nods.

“Yes, only the base at the very bottom is that sensitive,” he explains, twisting so he can show Woohyun. He stops to think before he says, “Oh, the base of my ears as well.”

“These ones?” Woohyun reaches up so he can rub his thumb against the base of the soft ears perched on top of Sunggyu’s head, and Sunggyu shivers and looks at him with a gaze like melted honey before he leans in to kiss Woohyun again.

“Yes,” Sunggyu murmurs, “but to be honest, it feels like I am on fire no matter what part of my body you touch.”

Sunggyu’s even more pliant after that, letting Woohyun carry him back to the bed so he can blow dry his hair and his tails.

“So fluffy,” Woohyun mutters, burying his face into the tails and hugging them to him once he’s done. “So fucking fluffy.”

“You like my tails more than you like me, do you not?” Sunggyu demands, a false tone of indignance creeping into his voice. The towel draped over his head and the smile tugging at the ends of his lips ruin the effect, though.

“Nah,” Woohyun says, and he pulls Sunggyu close so he can kiss him on the nose. He pulls back so he can rub his thumb across Sunggyu’s cheekbones, and he wonders just how he lived without Sunggyu in his life. “I like you the most.”

 

(On a bright spring morning, Woohyun rolls over in bed, woken up by the shrill ringing of his alarm.

“G’morning,” he mutters when he feels something soft hit his cheek, and he reaches out for it, expecting it to be one of Sunggyu’s tails. His hand closes around something vaguely spherical and furry, and his eyes shoot open. He’s holding what looks like a ball of fluff, and there’s another ball of fluff next to it. He blinks and rubs his eyes, and the balls of fluff have ears and tails, and Woohyun nearly screams.

“Sunggyu! What are these things doing here?” he asks, almost in hysterics, holding the two balls of fluff in one hand and shaking Sunggyu awake with the other.

Sunggyu slowly blinks awake, but once he sees what Woohyun’s doing, he narrows his eyes at him, and Woohyun has the sinking feeling that he’s said or done something wrong again.

“You do not recognize your own children?” Sunggyu asks, a dangerous tone in his words now, and Woohyun looks at the balls of fluff again. He realizes that they have the same coloring Sunggyu does, and that when they move around in his hands, he can make out foxlike features in their faces.

“My _children_? But how?” Woohyun stares at Sunggyu in disbelief. Sunggyu’s a man, or at least he’s pretty sure, and Sunggyu’s stomach had been flat just last night, and Woohyun doesn’t remember ever having any kids. Just where did these balls of fluff— _half-human and half-gumiho children_ —come from?

“Magic,” Sunggyu replies, simply and smugly, before he rolls over and goes back to sleep with a self-satisfied smirk on his lips.

Woohyun stares at the balls of fluff and then at Sunggyu, then back at the balls of fluff, and he wonders, for what must be the thousandth time by now, just what he’s gotten himself into.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you guys enjoyed the tales of gyumiho (hehe) ♡ please feel free to let me know what you think, either here or on twitter~ happy new year's eve!


	2. ever after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> woohyun tries to deal. (he fails.)

Woohyun stares. And stares. And keeps staring. “You _what_?”

“Try to keep up, Woohyun,” Sunggyu huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back into the couch. “I simply took a part of your soul and a part of my soul and fused them together, and that split in two. Honestly. What do you not understand? I thought you were supposed to be intelligent.”

“But—” Woohyun splutters. It just doesn’t _process_ , although he thinks that he should be used to this by now. His life hasn’t been the same ever since he hit his head in the shrine that day. “ _Why_?”

Sunggyu shrugs, lifting one of what Woohyun now knows aren’t random balls of fur, but tiny gumiho babies, to his shoulder. “Because I wanted to. And I thought it would be fun. And also, you seem to like children and animals.” His lips curl at the edge. A challenge. Woohyun and Sunggyu both know that Sunggyu wouldn’t leave now that they’re bonded, and it’s not like Woohyun would, either. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Woohyun mentally calculates how much more he’s going to have to spend on food and sighs. This would be a different story if he were still fresh out of college, his degree new and shiny in his hand. But he has a stable job that pays well now, and he knows that it’s more than enough to support two kids— and he feels oddly, oddly satisfied by just thinking that— and an annoying gumiho on top of that. “No. No at all, Sunggyu.”

 

It turns out that they don’t have to spend that much on food at all. Woohyun watches as Sunggyu cuts up a slice of (very raw, very red, very _bloody_ ) steak into smaller bite-sized pieces. The babies are just lying on the table next to Sunggyu’s hands, and when they smell the blood, they roll over until they hit the gumiho’s hand. Sunggyu then picks up some of the pieces and pops one into each of their mouths.

“Isn’t this a health hazard?” Woohyun ventures warily. He’s heard that babies aren’t supposed to have solid food until months after birth. Not that he has any personal experience with babies, of course.

Sunggyu gives him a withering look that tells him that he’s immediately wrong. “No,” Sunggyu starts, and Woohyun wonders if Sunggyu has always sounded this disapproving, or if this is just post-baby Sunggyu talking. Probably the latter. “They are not eating the meat, they do not have teeth yet. You dummy.”

As if to illustrate his point, Sunggyu picks up one of the fur balls and opens its mouth so Woohyun can see. He’s right. No teeth. “They are just sucking on the blood.” Sunggyu stops to think. “Well, they do not really have to eat, actually. But they just like the taste of it.”

Woohyun stares at the rest of the meat that he’d bought, the rest of the meat that Sunggyu had cut up into tiny pieces and only took two out of. “So what should I do with the rest of these?”

“You could make meatballs?” Sunggyu suggests. “Wait, actually. Please make meatballs. Thank you in advance.”

Woohyun sighs as he picks up the errant pieces of meat that Sunggyu hadn’t given to the babies yet. He doesn’t really want to admit it directly to Sunggyu’s face, but as annoying as he always is, he’s kind of cute when he puts the babies’ needs over his own.

 

Woohyun realizes that there’s a question that he hasn’t really asked yet. Sunggyu is lying on the bed and watching the babies as they take their afternoon nap. Woohyun’s taken off a few days from work, citing the fact that he’s had months of sick leave and vacation built up over the years before Sunggyu had come into his life. Those were the days he’d come into the office seven days a week, he remembers. Those were pretty shitty days.

He’d been so absorbed in his work that he’d lost some of the most valuable friendships that he’d forged over the years. He’d backed out on get-togethers and friendly dinners, saying that he had projects to finish and clients to speak to, and all of it had been true. He’d been too busy to even have a life, and it had been all his fault— he’d ended up working nearly twice as much as some of the others in the office had, if he counts the time spent at home reviewing contracts when everyone else had most surely been with their family and their loved ones.

Myungsoo had squinted at him when he’d requested time off, and when Woohyun had asked what was on his face, Myungsoo had only said, with a strange look in his eyes, “You’ve never taken time off before. Never. You’ve changed, Woohyun. You really have.”

He supposes he has, but like hell he’s going to let Sunggyu know. He’d never hear the end of the teasing.

He sits down next to Sunggyu, and when he does, Sunggyu scoots over so he can lay his head in Woohyun’s lap. His eyes are still on the babies, though.

“I have a question,” Woohyun says, and Sunggyu’s eyes snap to him. “So— the kids. Are they, um. Boys? Or girls? Or I don’t know, one of each or something.”

Sunggyu stares at him, his eyes boring upwards into Woohyun’s, before he sits up abruptly, almost hitting Woohyun’s chin with his forehead on the way up. “Actually, I do not know. Let me check,” he says, and he prods at one of the babies until it rolls onto its back, exposing its stomach. “Oh, this one is a boy.” He prods the other one, too. “This one is a boy as well.”

He settles back down, laying his head onto Woohyun’s lap again. “Any more questions? I promise I will not make fun of you if they are stupid questions.”

Just one. Woohyun hasn’t ever heard Sunggyu refer to them by name, only as “the kids,” “the babies,” “the children,” or, when Sunggyu hasn’t had enough sleep and they keep yipping throughout the night and waking him up to put them back to sleep, “the most infuriating and annoying creatures to have ever existed on this good earth.”

“What should we name them? Or did you already have names in mind?”

The beginnings of a slow and lazy smile start to spread across Sunggyu’s face. “I thought you would never ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellooo!! so this is how subsequent gyumiho chapters are likely going to be like, aka really short drabbles focusing on their lives together ^__^ hbd woohyun!!!


	3. before it all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sunggyu reflects.

As far as he can remember, Sunggyu has always been alone.

He doesn’t remember the early days of his life much anymore. He remembers them in vague memories, vague flashes of color and light and sound. He thinks that he must’ve had a mother at some point, or maybe a father, or _parents_ , at the very least. He must’ve had parents— otherwise, there’s no way he could be alive. Maybe they were killed by soldiers or hunters, or maybe they were taken down by something more powerful than they were. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember anymore.

He remembers having to fend for himself in the forest, having to hunt for his own prey. He doesn’t like doing it, but he knows that that’s what he’ll have to do to survive another day. He remembers starving sometimes and barely having enough energy to walk around, let alone to use his magic to find food. But he also remembers being happy, being able to run freely in the forest in whatever form he wants to, being content with hearing the sounds of birdsong and nature all around him.

Then _they_  come.

They come with violence and bloodshed, and Sunggyu can only watch as they destroy the only home that he’s ever had, the only home that he’s ever known. They burst through the forests with their staves in hand, and he decides that he doesn’t care anymore. He’ll let them kill him— except they don’t. They whisper some words that Sunggyu can’t quite make out under their breath, and the next thing he knows, he’s stuck inside a scroll.

He doesn’t know how much time passes when he’s trapped in there. He’s moved across lakes and rivers, across mountains and valleys, until they bring him up a long flight of stone stairs and into a shrine. It’s a small one, one made of wood and barely anything else, and Sunggyu sighs. It’s not a bad place to spend the rest of eternity, but it could be better. It could be so much better.

Sunggyu loses track of how much time he spends in the scroll. There isn’t much to do. No one comes into the shrine anymore, and the only company he has are the dust motes floating in the ear and the occasional bird. Days, weeks, months, then years pass by without him aging at all.

As the years go on, though, Sunggyu notices something. The spell that had been cast on him so many years ago is starting to lose its power. It’s not enough that he can escape, but he can do small things— little things, meaningless things. He doesn’t have that much power anymore, but it’s still fun to pretend like he can still do what he used to be able to do when he was in his prime.

He starts small. He tries making tiny tornadoes in the air, just to see if he can stir up the wind again. He can’t quite break out of the spell yet, but he realizes that he can project himself outwards as a fox and see through its eyes, so he tries it just to see what it’s like now. The world is different— there aren’t as many trees anymore, and it’s loud, _so loud_.

There’s a guy there. He looks young. Kind of annoying. But he has a thin shiny rectangular-shaped thing in his hand, and Sunggyu can’t help it— he wants to find out what that thing is. He almost makes the guy trip— oops— but he feels a strange tingling across his body which means that his magic is wearing off, and he runs all the way back into the shrine.

He doesn’t expect the guy to follow him.

Sunggyu watches him as he walks into the shrine. He’s a curious person— who would spend their free time going to a place like this and then follow random foxes into strange places? It doesn’t make sense.

Then the guy falls and hits his head and gets his blood onto Sunggyu’s scroll and Sunggyu feels this rush of _happiness_  and _freedom_  and he knows that he’s finally free. But then there’s the issue of the guy. Sunggyu stares down at him, and judging by the angle of his neck and just how much blood’s been spilled, he’s somewhere close to death, and Sunggyu sighs. It would be untoward not to pay this man back for giving him back his freedom, so he reaches deep within himself and gives the man back his life.

He also follows him home. It’s not hard to do, not when he can already see the place the guy wants to go back to (his home, somewhere in a maze of tall buildings) in his mind’s eye. Sunggyu tries to hide a smile when he sees the guy panic, but he doesn’t quite manage to hide it completely. This guy is funny. Sunggyu likes him.

Sunggyu learns more about Woohyun day by day. There’s been quite a few numbers of hiccups along the way. He doesn’t quite know how to adapt to modern day life, and it’s not quite his fault if he messes up cooking once in a while. After all, he’s used to eating his prey raw. It’s not his fault humans are such picky eaters.

Then Sunggyu gets antsy and tired of being cooped up in the same place for so long and Woohyun gives him back his bead and Sunggyu becomes stronger than ever and then Sunggyu worms his way into Woohyun’s bed— it’s because Woohyun’s bed is larger and softer and more comfortable than the bed in the room Sunggyu’s been given, of course, Woohyun being there is just an additional bonus.

Sunggyu realizes, early one morning when the sun is just beginning to make its ascent into the heavens and Woohyun has an arm thrown over Sunggyu’s waist, that he likes it here. He can’t quite imagine a life without Woohyun, and he hopes that Woohyun feels the same. Woohyun makes a sort of sniffling sound in his sleep, and Sunggyu leans closer to brush a stray lock of his hair aside. Woohyun moves just slightly into his touch, and Sunggyu doesn’t bother hiding his grin. Cute.

He’s happy here. He’s happy here with Woohyun and— well. It’s as much of a surprise to him as it’s probably going to be for Woohyun when he wakes up and finds two very fuzzy and two very _alive_  balls nestled against him, but he has to think fast. He knows that this kind of stuff happens spontaneously with beings with as much magical energy as he has, but he can’t let Woohyun know that he’s so happy that his own magic worked against him.

He’ll just wait until the morning, then. For now, he’s okay with just watching the rise and fall of Woohyun’s chest, and he knows that this is something that he’ll always remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to explore a little bit of sunggyu's past before proceeding with the furball plots hehe i'd love to go more in depth into his past someday 8_8


	4. four's a crowd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> woohyun takes sunggyu to meet one of his friends. predictably, everything that can go wrong _does_ go wrong.

Woohyun thinks that he’s seen a lot of really strange things in his life— Woohyun _knows_ he’s seen a lot of really, really weird things in his life, from a man appearing out of a Joseon-era scroll to that man turning into a fox to two very soft and very round balls of fur appearing in his bed one night. 

There’s no real reason for him to be surprised at anything anymore, except here he is, standing in the middle of someone else’s apartment and gaping in what he knows must be a very unattractive way at what he sees before him. 

“What the fuck,” he says eloquently, holding the kids in his arms. Hyunwoo tries to squirm out of his arms and Hyunsoo bites down on his wrist, but he keeps a tight grip on them. 

“Shut up,” Sunggyu snaps, holding a butter knife to the neck of the tall man he’s backed up against the wall. 

“Shut up,” the man echoes, his hands raised in an insincere show of surrender, but his eyes are sparkling with mirth.

The door opens, and the man looks over to where Myungsoo is toeing off his shoes, a bag of what must be soda in his hands, and another bag which looks like it’s full of pastries. “Welcome home, honey!” The man chirps, and a flurry of things happen all at once.

First, Myungsoo’s bags clatter to the ground, the cans of soda spilling out of the bag and the pastries tumbling everywhere, but Myungsoo has his eyes fixed on Sunggyu and the man. 

“What the fuck?” he asks, and his voice makes him sound like he isn’t even completely there, like he’s so shocked that he can’t even process what’s going on. Woohyun can relate.

Second, the man turns his head, his gaze flickering down to the spilled groceries on the ground before— and Woohyun will swear to any court that he saw this happen— all of the fallen pastries and cans of soda and bottles of soju rearrange themselves perfectly back into the bags Myungsoo had brought them in.

Then, finally, third, Sunggyu presses the butter knife deeper into the man’s skin, eliciting a sharp yelp, before he whirls around and hisses at Woohyun, “your friend is sleeping with a demon?” 

“I don’t really like the term demon,” the man says, seemingly unperturbed by the butter knife at his throat, and there’s a rather dangerous looking grin curving at the edges of his lips as he speaks his next words. “I prefer dokkaebi.” 

As chaos unfolds again, Woohyun has to mentally rewind a bit. 

He’d gotten to work just a few minutes late one day last week. The kids— Hyunwoo and Hyunsoo, they’d decided— had started to shift forms from vaguely fluffy fox pups to being slightly larger human babies, and having to wake up every so often to figure out if he had two foxes or two humans in the crib had taken a toll on Woohyun’s sleep schedules. 

Myungsoo had looked over at him as he staggered into the office and, with his eyebrows furrowing together, asked, “hey, where have you been lately? We really need to catch up sometime, hyung, I’ve barely seen you at all in the past few months. 

One thing had led to another, and Woohyun had gone home that night with an idea brewing in his head: he’d invite Myungsoo over to his place for dinner and introduce him to Sunggyu and the kids. It wouldn’t make sense for his best friend and his— Gumiho? Boyfriend? Roommate who doesn’t pay any rent at all?— not to meet at all.

Myungsoo had been more than thrilled, offering up his place instead so that Woohyun wouldn’t have to worry about any of the cleanup. “It’s fine, hyung, consider it a gift from me to you. I wouldn’t be lying if i said it’s mostly just so i can actually see you again, though,” he’d said the next day at work. 

Fast forward to just a few minutes ago: Woohyun and Sunggyu and the kids had showed up at Myungsoo’s apartment door, a fairly decent place in a fairly nice area of the city, their arms laden with bags of rice and side dishes. Sunggyu had gone out to the car to grab some rolls of kimbap they’d made together, and Woohyun had been more than surprised to see a lanky man opening the door instead.

“Who are you?” Woohyun had asked, stepping backwards just a bit, and the man had just rubbed the back of his head.

“I’m Myungsoo’s boyfriend,” he’d said, reaching out a hand to shake before realizing that Woohyun had his arms full with kids. “Sungyeol.” 

“Hi, Sungyeol,” Woohyun had said, stepping inside and placing some of his bags on Myungsoo’s dinner table. “I’m Woohyun.” 

Then Sunggyu had stepped through the door, holding the rolls of kimbap, and then he’d jerked his head so sharply to the right that Woohyun had been sure he’d get whiplash, and then he’d somehow managed to procure a butter knife seemingly out of nowhere and lunge at Sungyeol.

“Monster,” Sunggyu had hissed, placing the knife precariously at Sungyeol’s throat, and the only thing Woohyun could ever have thought of to describe the situation was: _what the fuck_.

Woohyun blinks. It’s been the most exciting five minutes of his life.

He’s seated at the table now, holding Hyunwoo in his lap and trying to keep him from reaching for Sunggyu’s discarded butter knife. Sunggyu sits next to him, Hyunsoo in his lap, his body practically vibrating with tension. Sungyeol is across from Woohyun and Myungsoo is across from Sunggyu, an arrangement that Woohyun thinks will probably prevent unnecessary bloodshed for the next hour or so.

“You’re a what?” Woohyun asks.

“A dokkaebi,” Sungyeol says. “Like a goblin? Kinda? But I’m much, much more handsome and charming than those regular old uglies.” 

“He is evil,” Sunggyu says plainly, moving the butter knife away from Hyunwoo before the baby can grab it. “He will only bring bad luck into your life. These good for nothing lowlifes are more than happy to scheme and steal and seduce.” 

Oh. Woohyun supposes that of course the one person he’d thought was normal in his life, Myungsoo, would turn out to be involved in all of this supernatural stuff as well. He hadn’t even believed in it up until now, but he guesses that it serves him right. 

“Did you know?” Woohyun asks Myungsoo, who until now has just been trying to distract Hyunsoo’s attention away from the butter knife with some colored blocks.

“Huh?” Myungsoo looks up, his eyes wide.

“Did you know that your boyfriend is— well. Like that?” 

“Oh. I mean, I thought he was a normal guy, remember that guy from the auditing firm?” Woohyun vaguely remembers Myungsoo saying something about that, but he can’t quite bring up the exact memory of it, so he nods anyway. “Well, that was him. Turns out he’s stuck in the human world now because he stole a god’s treasured pet dog a few centuries ago. He’s kinda harmless now, though, I guess.” 

“By the way, it was totally worth it,” Sungyeol chimes in. “She’s so cute. Her name is Aga.” 

“So he’s not… evil? He won’t eat you in your sleep?” Woohyun asks, rocking Hyunwoo from side to side.

“I don’t think s—” Myungsoo starts, but he’s cut off by Sungyeol.

“Not unless he wants me to,” he says with a leer, and Myungsoo’s expression darkens before elbowing Sungyeol in the side. Sunggyu pretends to repress a laugh at that, and Sungyeol’s eyes become sharp again. “Enough about me, though. What are you doing out here in the human world, gumiho?” 

Sunggyu bristles. “I was sealed in a shaman’s scroll and released when this guy here hit his head in my shrine, but that is none of your business, dokkaebi.” 

“And what are those things?” Sungyeol asks, gesturing towards the infants in their arms.

“They are not _things_ , you uncultured pig, can you not tell or is your brain too small to comprehend what they are?” Sunggyu snorts. “They are our children.” 

“How’d you make babies?” Sungyeol looks interested now, a glint in his eyes that Woohyun isn’t sure if he likes the look of or not.

“Magic,” Sunggyu says smugly.

“Can we also—” Sungyeol looks to Myungsoo, and Myungsoo looks up from poking at Hyunsoo’s tiny hands long enough to give Sungyeol a blank stare.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Myungsoo says with an air of finality that Woohyun’s learned to recognize with when Myungsoo knows he’s won the discussion, and he represses a laugh. Dokkaebi or not, Myungsoo seems to be good at handling his boyfriend.

“Let’s just eat,” Woohyun says, suddenly tired to the bone, and everyone else nods furiously, except for Sunggyu, who keeps his gaze firmly fixed on Sungyeol. He manages to relax, though, handing Hyunsoo over to Myungsoo’s waiting arms and making half-playful and half-serious jabs at Sungyeol. By the end of the night, Sunggyu’s as unwound as Woohyun’s ever seen him, joking openly with the others. Surprisingly, the night passes by quickly, and they have to leave faster than they’d anticipated.

“How was it?” Woohyun asks as they walk back to the car, the kids snoozing in their arms. “What did you think of them?"

“It was fun,” Sunggyu admits. “Even the dokkaebi was funny. Funny-looking, mostly, but also funny.” 

They finish strapping the kids into their car seats, and Woohyun takes advantage of the darkness of the night to lean over the driver’s seat to press a light kiss to Sunggyu’s cheek. “Thanks for coming tonight. I didn’t know about the boyfriend, but— I guess it worked out.”

“Of course,” Sunggyu says, his eyes shining in the moonlight. “I would like to do it again.” 

Of course, Woohyun thinks. Anything to see Sunggyu use a butter knife as a weapon again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy third birthday to ifnt's second best title last romeo *_*_*_* sorry i don't have a real explanation for how this chapter turned out the way it did lolol


End file.
